Paramilitary attacks on children and juveniles in the North nearly doubled in the two years after the Belfast Agreement was signed, according to a report.
The finding came in "They Shoot Children Don't They" by Dr Liam Kennedy, professor of modern history at Queen's University in Belfast.
It was prepared for the cross-community Northern Ireland Committee Against Terrorism and the House of Commons Northern Ireland Affairs Committee and will be submitted to the Stormont Assembly when it returns after the recess.
It found that loyalist and republican gangs doled out their own "justice" with increasing regularity despite the Agreement, which was supposed to end violence. In 1999 and 2000, the gangs brutalised 47 under-18s compared with 25 in the previous two years.
The report said there was an "urgent need" for the an anti-intimidation unit in Northern Ireland. It urged the Stormont Assembly and Gen John de Chastelain's decommissioning body to monitor the scale of paramilitary-style beatings.
It also proposed the idea of political penalties being imposed on the political parties whose armed wings "continue to engage in the mutilation of people including children".
Prof Kennedy said his fear for the future was of "the consolidation of a patchwork of Mafia-style mini-states, of orange and green complexion, operating vendetta-style justice and sustained economically by extortion and other forms of racketeering".
PA